A screenshot editor needs to do a few things - but it must do these three things easily and well:1. Draw curved and straight arrows, dotted or solid line, with various end dots and points2. Draw open boxes and circles of various shapes to highlight areas of interest3. Text easily without having to pre-define a limited bounding box for the ad-hoc text

By far, the most powerful easy-to-use freeware screenshot editor is Paint.NET, which isn't on Linux.On Linux, a distant second place goes to Kolourpaint, and a far distant third place to The GIMP (based on ease of performing those three items above).

Pinta looks interesting. I had been using Jshot, but it uses bounding boxes, sorry. I unsuccessfully tried to compile (rpmbuild --rebuild) the pinta-1.4-1.fc18.src.rpm with dependency issues. The biggest issue was mono > 2.8 *and* a couple of others. I could not find a repo that had the correct combination to

Indeed! I've been annotating screenshots for a decade, and, nothing, absolutely nothing, is anything like Paint.NET for drawing arrows beautifully and easily; some programs (e.g., Kolourpaint) can draw open boxes (using The GIMP for that is an exercise); and most programs, inexplicably, force an unnecessary bounding box for text.

The key feature though, which is hard to get in other programs, is the ability to draw arrows like you can't believe.Nothing is as easy and beautiful as what Paint.NET does with arrows ... so ... if Pinta has that one feature, it's a keeper on Linux.

pjwelsh wrote:With any luck, one of the real developers will step up with info ;-)

Thanks for your effort as it's out of my league to compile when others already failed. However, to do my part, I did just now send an email to the developer, Cameron White (cameron white 91 at gmail) and the Pinta Google Group "Pinta Project Mailing List" (pinta at google groups), letting them know of our dilemma.

On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 09:32:41 +0100, Nux! wrote:> install Shutter; does what you said and more.

I have had Shutter all along on my CentOS 6.4 laptop.

Here's how Shutter compares to Paint.NET on those 3 key annotation items:(IMHO)

1. Curved & dashed arrows:Shutter arrows are primitive and don't come close to what Paint.NET does with arrows. Even Kolourpaint does a better job with curved arrows (with manually drawn arrowheads) than does Shutter; but neither can do dashes, dotted lines, or solder dots, or various arrowheads like Paint.NET does. Kolourpaint can curve an arrow; but once you've seen how Paint.NET does curves, you'll never be happy with anything else. <=== this is the key usability feature of Paint.NET, IMHO!

2. Open boxes & ellipses:Shutter does a fine job of drawing open boxes and ellipses; just as nicely as does Paint.NET or Kolourpaint.

3. Ad-hoc texting:Shutter does not need a bounding box for ad-hoc texting; and you can move the results around the screen, and rearrange the margins; however, Shutter brings up an annoying unnecessary duplicate editing window, where you have to make all your changes in *that* extra editing window (and not in the spot you're actually texting). So, you have to look with one eye where you're typing and with the other eye you have to see what's going on in the screenshot (and, some of us, use our third eye to see what we're typing on the keyboard!).

In summary, Shutter is a nice tool, and I use it myself, as I do KolourPaint (and a few others, including The GIMP); however, once you've seen how well Paint.NET does arrows - you'll be amazed at the power & usability of that one key feature for annotating screenshots.

I do not know if Pinta handles arrows like Paint.NET did; but if it does, that alone would make Pinta a keeper on any CentOS system that does annotation!

Pinta can also be installed using the tarball.1. Download the tarball: $ wget http://www.pinta-project.com/download.ashx2. Then use the classical: $ ./configure $ make $ sudo make install 3. Run pinta with the command: $ pinta

I you get more votes then it is more likely the idea will get implemented. But please when reporting idea write more details, maybe add some print-screen or step-by-step instructions from the other tool.

By the way we are currently approaching 1.5 release (only one single bug to solve). This release will make it way more easy to write plug-ins. So if someone is interested to implement some additional features, then a plug-in can be written.

Namely that Fedora, Mageia, and OpenSuSe have Pinta RPMs, but not CentOS.Thanks for looking (I've added that web site into my list above for when I need RPM, which seems to happen just about once a week lately).I haven't heard back from the Pinta developers ... but it's not looking good.

Just to give you a heads up: You will want to be VERY CAREFUL with some of those listed sites! You can get into package (.rpm) issues very quickly. If you have not done so already, make sure to look carefully over the http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories link for information on repositories.

Oh, I've been there, done that! I had to back out a lot of EL5 stuff that crept in, somehow, in my myriad attempts to install on Centos.Thanks for the warning. I have reviewed and provided input to those repository pages (which fail in one way because they try to be too politically correct, even for the lousy repositories - but I understand you can't say what I can say about repositories).So, thanks for the warning - and - yes - I've been there.

At the moment, I've given up on trying to install Pinta, so, in effect, I consider this thread closed (unless someone else wants to take it from here).